C-SPAN’s Online Feed Gets Interrupted By Russian TV

C-SPAN is investigating how their main online feed was interrupted for roughly ten minutes by programming for the Kremlin-backed broadcaster “Russia Today” on Thursday.

The network briefly took over the feed of C-SPAN1 while it was broadcasting a discussion in Congress regarding the Securities and Exchange Commission Regulatory Accountability Act.

C-SPAN said in a statement that the interruption was likely due to an internal routing error since RT is one of the programs that it regularly monitors. They added that they don’t believe they were hacked.

The incident occurred around 2:30 P.M. eastern time while U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) was giving a speech.

The feed cut in with a commercial break before returning to the RT news desk, where an anchor was talking about a suicide bombing. The takeover lasted for roughly ten minutes.

Waters told the New York Times that she found the timing of the interruption “strange.”

“I just think it’s strange,” Waters said. “At a time when our intelligence agencies are very confident and basically have confirmed that Russia hacked the D.N.C. and other political interests, and then we have, while I’m on the floor of the House, talking about Trump and Russia, I get interfered with and interrupted by Russia Today.”

The takeover of the C-SPAN online feed comes at a time where there are reports that Russian hackers interfered with the November election.